The Official Blog of Pianist & Composer Jennifer Thomas

Category Archives: Fans

Every now and then, I like to give my thoughts to aspiring young artists, for what it’s worth.

I think that when we see successful artists today, we often think that they have always been that successful, beautiful, and talented. And I’m sure there are a small handful of artists out there who have had a road paved in gold to reach the succeses they are at now. However, I think it’s rather more safe and realistic to say that the majority of successful artists have had to work very very hard, and have exprienced many bumps and bruises along the way. Even the great masters of old like Mozart and Beethoven – they all experienced many set backs and hard times before reaching a point of success (even sometimes not until after their death).

I have definitely had many of these experiences of my own. Heck, I auditioned for a music scholarship at my college prior to attending, and was rejected. But after a few following years of intense study and practice, I improved and ended up one of the top 3 pianists in the entire school. Sure I was selected to perform a piano concerto with an entire symphony orchestra, but before winning that priviledge, I had also experienced disappointed from losing concerto concerto competitions in years past.

I really don’t think there is a way to avoid some of the negative experiences that we go through in life. Most often, we experience them so that we can improve, learn, and become better people. The key is to be able to know what you can use from these situations to empower yourself, and what to throw away and not let get to you.

Anyway, I’ve just been thinking about this a lot this week. Know who you are as an artist and be confident in that. Work hard. Accept the bad with the good, and continue. “To thing own self be true…and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” – Shakespeare.

I finally finally finally just got back my HDV footage of my Seattle concert from December of 2007 (the concert I did with Jace Vek at Benaroya Hall). I performed a really fun version of The Flight of the Bumble Bee called “Boogie Woogie Bumble Bee” (by Jack Fina) and put together a clip just for the heck of it. I was pregnant at the time – hence the little baby belly.

Hopefully soon I’ll have more clips to post from that concert, as well as another concert that I did in Salt Lake on a fabulous 9 foot Fazioli piano that I was only just recently able to get the footage for.

Hello Friends….I’m in the Quarter Finals of the Ourstage competition for July. I need your votes if you have time.

I’ve got two different songs in two different genres that made it in the top 20. Voting in the Quarter Finals ends on Monday night 9pm PST. Then Semi Finals are Tuesday & Wednesday (ending, again, at 9pm PST). Finals are Thursday the 31st. Winner of the Finals gets $5,000. “Fly Away” came in at number 3 overall in the Finals in May out of 46,000 songs on the sight. Help me get number 1 this time! 🙂 Your votes help boost my standings.

Details below. Your support in competitions like this help me to be able to continue creating great music and stay independent.

Thanks for your support as always.

Cheers,

Jennifer

P.S. Songs pop up randomly and several times. You don’t have to listen to the same song again once you’ve already listened to it once. This will save you time.

I just wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you who helped support my music this week in the Ourstage.com competition. I ended up winning the following:

Number 3 OVERALL in the Finals (there were 29, 161 entries on the site for the month of May, so 3 ain’t too shabby!)

Number 2 in Solo Instrumental (Won an award for “Top 10” for this category)

Number 1 in Instrumental (Won the Channel Award)

Well, I have to say it was a fun day watching the stats on all of the voting for the finals. I honestly did not think I would end up in the top 20, let alone the top 10 since I was competing against all of the other number 1 winners in each genre (46 genres). But I finished at 3 overall. That is pretty cool and humbling – there were a LOT of talented people in there. I am honored to have had the chance to compete.

I just uploaded some new selections that I’ve entered for June. This will be my second month competing on ourstage, so I’m curious to try out some other genres. For May I only had entered 3 songs into Instrumental, Solo Instrumental, and New Age/World – not having any idea how I would fair in any of those categories. Now that I’ve gotten my “feet wet”, I think I will try some more aggressive categories.

As for the baby update because many of you have asked – I’m due any day now. It’s been an extremely LONG 9 months and I’m pretty much sick of pregnancy. My feet are swollen, my hands are swollen…well, pretty much my entire body feels swollen. I’m achey and cranky and my poor husband even puts up with me and massages my back and my feet and makes me dinner! 🙂 Love that guy.

No baby as of yet though – I think the little guy thinks he is going to stay in my tummy forever- and that just won’t fly with me! He has been served an eviction notice. If he even thinks about going over my duedate I will seriously cry.

His “official” duedate isn’t until Sunday the 8th, but I’m beginning to learn that that is just a number on a calendar that pretty much doesn’t have much meaning to babies. They come when they want.

Anyway – thanks again for all your support. Hopefully you are all well and getting ready to have an awesome summer pretty soon. I really appreciate all the support of my music. I couldn’t do this without that, so thanks a million.

– Jennifer

P.S. I’ll be releasing a new album in August of 2009, just by way of information.

I really need your help and support today and tomorrow. Two of my songs are competing in the Semi-Finals on ourstage.com. This is a really cool site where indie artists can compete in thier genres against each other for cash prizes, gigs, and other cool stuff.

Right now “Fly Away” is the number 1 song in the Instrumental genre, and “A Beautiful Storm” is number 2 in the Solo Intrumental.

I NEED YOUR VOTES!!

Today (Friday) is the last day you can vote for me in the semi-finals up until midnight (EST). EVERY vote counts and helps me to get closer to winning this stage. I need to secure the number 1 spot (in either or both) categories to go on to competing in the FINAL round tomorrow. The Final round is where the number 1 song from every genre competes against each other for the grand prize – which involves a $5,000 cash prize, promotions, mentor sessions with industry guru’s, etc.

What YOU can do, as my friend, to help me:

– You will need to vote in 2 seperate genres (it’s easy if you have two web pages open). (Right now “A Beautiful Storm” is a little behind in the 2 spot and could use some help 😉

– Songs from all of the Top 10 artists will randomly pop up to battle each other. You just have to listen to each song for a minimum of 15 seconds each, and then vote. When my songs pop up randomly to battle against the other top 10 artists, you just need to vote for me. (thank you, thank you, thank you)

– Tip: Once you have already listened to a song, if it pops up again you don’t have to re-listen to it. You can just go ahead and keep voting (this saves time). My song will come up multiple times randomly, so don’t stop voting after you see me on there just once! The more times you can vote for me – the more it helps my standings!

– If I end up winning the number 1 spots in one or both genres – please continue voting for me tomorrow (Saturday) in the Final Round (I’ll post another blog if that happens). Even if I do make it to the Final Rounds, I would be competing against genres like Hip Hop, Pop, and Techno – which for a newage pianist like me – would be pretty hard to top. It would really be saying something to beat out those genres. So I NEED your support!

– Sign up to be in my “Fan Club” on ourtage.com and if I win the Final grand prize, I will make my entire album available for free digital mp3 download for one week exclusively only for my Fan Club.

– Read the instructions on the banners below and follow the two links to vote in the two genres:

So, I have been a big fan of Topbun’s MySpace layouts since last year. They are always really clean and the images are stunning. I am a minimalist when it comes to webdesign and layouts, so I just really appreciate their artwork.

Last week, someone from topbun.com approached me and after a lot of compliments on my music, etc. (and me turning red), said that they wanted to design a layout specifically for me. I guess they don’t normally voluntarily seek people out, so I was very flattered, and nervous too.

Well, it is finished and I now present to you the official “Jennifer Thomas” MySpace layout!

I would feel so honored by anyone who wanted to support both my music and topbun by displaying the layout on their page. Here is the link to do so:

So, I just found out last week from my mother-in-law that a 5th grader at one of her schools wrote a creative writing assignment on one of my songs and how it made her feel! To say the least, I was very flattered. So Amanda, here it is – your 5th grade creative writing assignment. Thanks for letting me share with everyone.

Maybe I’m a bit biased, but I think you surely deserve an A+! And I should also hire you as my publicity woman.

____________

1/18/07

One song I enjoy is “A Beautiful Storm” by Jennifer Thomas. It makes me feel like lying down and closing my eyes. I feel if I’m on a beach lying on warm sand, listening to the ocean’s rolling tide. I feel the wind brushing my skin and tingling through my spine.

Soon I see a storm rolling over the ocean! I hear the piano play as if the rain was hitting the ocean, and the beach. Then a soothing violin comes in. With the piano’s rain and the violin’s gentleness, it feels as if it were one. With that thought it sounds so beautiful and relaxing.

Towards the end of the song the sun starts breaking through the clouds, and gives you a warm feeling.

Not many have had the opportunity to hear this relaxing song. Let alone hear her music! I feel lucky to hear her work.